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Library 

OF  THE 

University  of  North  Carolina 

This  book  was  presented  by  the  family 
of  the  late 

KEMP  PLUMMER  BATTLE,  '49 

President  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 
from  1876  to      yO 


1/O970.T -GlSo'3 


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OFFICIAL  REPORT 


OF  THE 


History  Committee 


OP  THE 


GRAND  CAMP,  C.  V., 

Department   of  Virginia. 


BY 


HON.  GEO.  L.  CHRISTIAN,  Chairman. 


Read  at  Wytheville,  Va.,  October  23rd,  1902,  and 

Published  by   Order   of  the   Grand 

Camp   of   Virginia. 


On   the   Treatment  and    Exchange 
of  Prisoners. 


HISTORY  COMMITTEE: 

Geo.  L.  Christian,  Chairman;  R.  T.  Barton,  Carter  R.  Bis- 
hop, R.  A.  Brock,  Rev  B.  D.  Tucker,  John  W.  Daniel,  James 
Mann,  R.  S.  B.  Smith,  T.  H.  Edwards,  W.  H.  Hurkamp,  John 
W.  Fulton,  M.  W.  Hazelwood,  Micajah  Woods,  Charles  M. 
Blackford. 


PRESS  OF  B.  D.  SMITH   &  BROS.,   PULASKI,  VA. 


OFFICIAL  REPORT 

OF  THE 

History  Committee  of  the  Grand  Camp  C.  V. 

DEPARTMENT  OK  VIRGINIA. 


October  23kd,  1902. 


To  the  Grand  Gamp  of  Confederate  Veterans  of  Virginia: 

Your  History  Committee  again  returns  its  thanks  to  you, 
and  the  public,  for  the  very  cordial  way  in  which  you  have 
shown  your  appreciation  of  its  labors,  as  contained  in  its  last 
three  reports.  It  may  iuterest  you  to  know,  that  whilst  these 
reports  have  been  published  and  scattered  broadcast  over  this 
land,  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  controvert  or  deny  any  prin- 
ciple contended  for,  or  fact  asserted,  in  any  of  them,  so  far  as 
we  have  heard.  We  think  we  can,  therefore,  justly  claim  that 
these  things  have  been  established  : 

1st.  That  the  South  did  not  go  to  war  to  maintain,  or  to  per- 
petuate, the  institution  of  slavery. 

2nd.  The  right  of  secession  (the  real  issue  of  the  war),  and 
that  this  right  was  first  asserted  at  the  North,  and  as  clearly  recog- 
nized there  as  at  the  South. 

3rd.  That  the  North,  and  not  the  South,  ivas  the  aggressor  in 
bringing  on  the  war. 

4-th.  That  on  the  part  of  the  South  the  war  was  conducted 
according  to  the  principles  of  civilized  warfare,  whilst  on  the  part 
of  the  North  it  was  conducted  in  the  most  inhuman  and  barbarous 
manner. 

The  last  of  the  above  named  was  the  subject  of  our  last  re- 
port, in  which  we  drew  a  contrast  between  the  way  the^war  was 
conducted  on  our  part,  and  the  way  it  was  conducted  by  our 
quondam  enemies,  which,  we  think,  was -greatly  to  the  credit  of 
the  South.     The  subject  of  this  report,  the 


"  Treatment  and  Exchange  of  Prisoners," 

is  really  a  continuation  and  further  discussion  of  the  contrast 
begun  in  that  report  and  a  necessary  sequel  to  that  discussion. 
The  further  treatment  of  this  subject  becomes  most  important 
too,  from  the  fact  that  our  people  know  very  little  about  the 
true  state  of  the  case,  whilst  both  during  and  since  the  war,  the 
people  of  the  North,  with  the  superior  means  at  their  command, 
have  denounced  and  maligned  the  South  and  its  leaders  as  mur- 
derers and  assassins,  and  illustrated  these  charges  by  the  alleged 
inhuman  and  barbarous  way  in  which  they  treated  their  prison- 
ers during  the  late  war:  e.  g.,  the  late  James  G.  Blaine,  of  Maine, 
said  on  the  floor  of  the  United  States  Congress  in  1876  : 

uMr.  Davis  was  the  author,  knowingly,  deliberate- 
ly, guiltily  and  wilfully  of  the  gigantic  murder  and 
crime  at  Andersonville,  and  I  here  before  God,  meas- 
uring my  words,  knowing  their  full  extent  and  import, 
declare,  that  neither  the  deeds  of  the  Duke  of  Alva  in 
the  Low  Countries,  nor  the  massacre  of  Saint  Bartholo- 
mew, nor  the  thumb-screws  and  engines  of  torture  of 
the  Spanish  Inquisition,  begin  to  compare  in  atrocity 
with  the  hideous  crimes  of  Andersonville  ; " 

and  he  quoted  and  endorsed  a  report  of  a  committee  of  the 
Federal  Congress  made  during  the  war,  in  which  they  say: 

"No  pen  can  describe,  no  painter  sketch,  no  imagi- 
nation comprehend,  its  fearful  and  unutterable  iniquity. 
It  would  seem  that  the  concentrated  madness  of  earth 
and  hell  had  found  its  final  lodgment  in  the  breasts  of 
those  who  had  inaugurated  the  rebellion,  and  controlled 
the  policy  of  the  Confederate  Government,  and  that  the 
prison  at  Andersonville  had  been  selected  for  the  most 
terrible  human  sacrifice  which  the  world  had  ever  seen." 

It  is  true  that  the  statement  made  by  Mr.  Blaine  was  denied, 
and  its  falsity  fully  shown  by  both  Mr.  Davis  and  Senator  Hill, 
of  Georgia;  and  the  report  of  the  Committee  of  the  Federal 
Congress,  and  an  equally  slanderous  and  partisan  publication 
entitled .  " Narration  of  Sufferings  in  Bebel  Military  Prisons" 
(with  hideous  looking  skeleton  illustrations  of  alleged  victims), 
issued  by  the  United  States  Sanitary  Commission  in  1864,  were 
fully  answered  by  a  counter  report  of  a  committee  of  the  Con- 
federate Congress.     And  it  is  also  true  that  in  1876,  the  Bev  N 


John  Wm.  Jones,  D.  D.,  who  was  then  editing  the  Southern 
Historical  Society  Papers,  made  a  full  and  masterly  investigation 
and  report  on  this  subject,  vindicating  the  South  and  its  leaders 
from  these  aspersions  (for  which  work,  as  said  in  our  last  report, 
the  Southern  people  owe  Dr.  Jones  a  lasting  debt  of  gratitude). 
(The  letter  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  report  of  the  Committee  of  the 
Confederate  Congress,  with  other  valuable  material  collected  by 
Dr.  Jones,  are  all  published  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Southern 
Historical  Papers,  and  also  in  a  separate  volume. )  But  whilst 
these  publications  were  most  satisfactory  to  us  at  the  time,  they, 
necessarily,  did  not  contain  the  contemporaneous  correspondence 
in  reference  to  the  exchange  and  treatment  of  prisoners,  con- 
tained in  the  publication  known  as  "Kebellion  Official  Beoords," 
published  by  the  Federal  Government  since  that  time — a  corre- 
spondence invaluable,  as  it  makes  the  representatives  of  the  two 
Governments,  at  the  time,  tell,  in  their  own  way,  the  true  story 
of  these  events.  It  is  from  these  letters  and  other  contemporane- 
ous orders  and  papers,  that  we  propose  to  show  ivhich  side  was 
responsible  for  Anderson ville,  Salisbury,  "The  Libby,"  and 
u  Belle  Isle,"  in  the  South,  and  for  Camp  Douglas,  Gratiot 
Street,  Fort  Delaware,  Johnson's  Island,  Elmira,  Point  Lookout, 
and  other  like  places  in  the  North.  In  doing  this  we  do  not 
think  it  either  necessary  or  proper  to  revive  the  tales  of  horror 
and  misery  contained  in  many  of  the  personal  recitals  of  the 
captives  on  either  side,  such  as  are  collected  in  the  works  of  Dr. 
Jones,  the  "Sanitary  Commission,"  and  others.  Many  of  these 
are  simply  heart-sickening  and  disgusting;  and,  making  allow- 
ances for  all  exaggerations  necessarily  incident  to  the  surround- 
ings of  the  writers,  there  is  enough  in  them  to  convince  any 
candid  reader  that  there  were  cruelties  and  abuses  inflicted  on 
helpless  prisoners,  by  petty  officers  and  guards,  that  should 
never  have  been  inflicted,  and  which  we  hope  the  higher  officers 
of  neither  Government  would  have  permitted  or  tolerated  for  a 
moment. 

But  what  we  are  concerned  about  is,  to  show  by  these 
"  official  records "  that  neither  Mr.  Davis,  nor  any  Department 
or  representative  of  the  Confederate  Government,  was  responsible 
for  the  establishment  of  these  prisons,  and  the  sufferings  therein, 
as  heretofore  charged  by  our  enemies,  and  that  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment, through  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  II.  W.  Balleck  and  U.  S,  Grant 


as  its  representative  actors,  ivas  directly  and  solely  responsible  for 
the  establishment  of  these  places,  and  consequently  for  all  the  suffer- 
ings and  death  which  occurred  therein. 

The  reports  and  correspondence  relative  to  the  exchange 
and  treatment  of  prisoners  fill  four  of  the  large  volumes  of  the 
"Rebellion  Records,"  and  whilst  we  have  striven  to  tell  the  full 
story,  or,  rather,  to  omit  nothing  essential  to  the  truth,  it  is 
simply  impossible,  within  the  limits  of  this  report,  to  do  more 
than  call  attention  to  some  of  the  most  important  and  salient 
features  of  the  correspondence,  etc.,  and  only  to  an  extent 
necessary  to  disclose  the  real  conditions  at  the  several  dates 
referred  to.  This  is  all  that  we  have  attempted  to  do,  but  we 
have  tried  to  do  this  faithfully. 

The  Policy  of  the  Confederate  Government  as  Shown 
by  Acts  of  Congress,  etc. 

To  show  the  declared  purpose  and  policy  of  the  Confederate 
Government  towards  the  prisoners  of  war  from  the  beginning  : 
As  early  as  May  21st,  1861,  two  months  before  the  first  battle  of 
Manassas,  the  Confederate  Congress  passed  an  act  providing 
that — 

u  All  prisoners  of  war  taken,  whether  on  land  or  at 
sea,  d uring  the  pending  hostilities  with  the  United  States, 
shall  be  transferred  by  the  captors  from  time  to  time, 
and  as  often  as  convenient,  to  the  Department  of  War; 
and  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  with 
the  approval  of  the  President,  to  issue  such  instructions 
to  the  Quartermaster-General,  and  his  subordinates,  as 
shall  provide  for  the  safe  custody  and  sustenance  of 
prisoners  of  war;  and  that  rations  furnished  'prisoners  of 
war  shall  be  the  same  in  quantity  and  quality  as  those 
furnished  to  enlisted  men  in  the  Army  of  the  Confederacy." 

By  an  Act  of  February,  1864,  the  Quartermaster- General 
was  relieved  of  this  duty,  and  the  Commisary-General  of  Sub- 
sistence was  ordered  to  provide  for  the  sustenance  of  prisoners 
of  war,  and  according  to  General  Orders  No.  159,  Adjutant 
Inspector  General's  Office,  it  was  provided  that  "  Hospitals  for 
prisoners  of  war  are  placed  on  the  same  footing  as  other  Confederate 
States  Hospitals  in  all  respects,  and  will  be  managed  accordingly  J '' 


General  Lee's  Orders. 

General  Lee,  in  his  testimony  before  the  Reconstruction 
Committee  of  Congress,  says  of  the  treatment  of  prisoners  on 
the  field  : 

"The  orders  always  were,  that  the  whole  field  should 
be  treated  alike.  Parties  were  sent  out  to  take  the 
Federal  wounded,  as  well  as  the  Confederate,  and  the 
surgeons  were  told  to  treat  the  one  as  they  did  the  other. 
These  orders  given  by  me  were  respected  on  every  field." 

And  there  is  nothing  in  all  the  records,  so  far  as  we  can 
find,  which  indicates  that  any  Department  of  the  Confederate 
Government,  or  any  representative  of  any  such  Department, 
failed  to  carry  out  these  provisions  of  the  law,  and  these  orders, 
as  far  as  they  were  able  to  do  so.  Of  course,  there  were  times 
when,  by  reason  of  insufficient  transportation,  and  insufficient 
supplies  of  food  and  clothing  of  all  kinds,  it  was  simply  impos- 
sible to  get  proper  supplies  and  in  sufficient  quantities  to  prevent 
great  suffering  among  the  prisoners  in  Southern  prisons.  But 
this  was  equally  true  of  the  Confederate  soldiers  in  the  field,  and 
the  assertion  on  page  68  of  the  before-referred-to  publication  by 
the  Northern  Sanitary  Commission,  headed  by  Dr.  Valentine 
Mott,  shows  its  partisanry  and  worthlessness  as  history,  when  it 
charges  the  Confederate  authorities  with  "deliberately  withhold- 
ing necessary  food  from  their  prisoners  of  war,  and  furnishing 
them  with  what  was  indigestible  and  loathsome,  when  their  own 
army  was  abundantly  supplied  with  good  and  wholesome  food;  " 
*  *  *  "of  depriving  their  prisoners  of  their  own  cloth- 
ing, and  also  of  withholding  the  issue  of  sufficient  to  keep  them 
warm  when  the  soldiers  of  their  own  army  were  well  equipped 
and  well  protected  from  exposure  to  the  wet  and  cold."  The 
world  now  knows,  that  at  the  very  time  when  these  false  charges 
were  being  formulated,  the  Confederate  soldiers  in  the  field  were 
almost  naked  and  starving,  and  that  nearly  ninety  per  cent,  of 
the  rest  of  their  equipment  had  been  captured  from  their 
enemy  in  battle. 

Exchange  of  Prisoners. 

From  the  very  beginning,  the  Confederate  authorities  were 
anxious  to  make  an  arrangement  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners, 


6 

•  and  indeed  that  the  war  should  be  conducted  in  all  of  its  features 
on  the  highest  and  most  humane  plane  known  to  civilized  nations. 
To  that  end  Mr.  Davis  wrote  Mr.  Lincoln  on  July  6th,  1861,  as 
follows  : 

"It  is  the  desire  of  this  Government  so  to  conduct  the 
war  now  existing,  as  to  mitigate  its  horrors  as  far  as 
may  be  possible;  and  with  this  intent,  its  treatment  of  the 
prisoners  captured  by  its  forces  has  been  marked  by 
the  greatest  humanity  and  leniency  consistent  with  pub- 
lic obligation.  Some  have  been  permitted  to  return 
home  on  parole,  others  to  remain  at  large  under  similar 
conditions,  within  this  Confederacy,  and  all  have  been 
furnished  with  rations  for  their  subsistence,  such  as  are 
allowed  to  our  own  troops." 

This  letter  was  sent  to  Washington  by  a  special  messenger 
(Col.  Taylor);  but  he  was  refused  an  audience  with  Mr.  Lincoln, 
and  was  forced  to  content  himself  with  a  verbal  reply  from 
General  Scott  to  the  effect  that  the  letter  had  been  delivered  to 
Mr.  Lincoln,  and  that  he  would  reply  to  it  in  writing  a,s  soon  as 
possible.     But  no  answer  ever  came. 

For  nearly  a  year  after  the  war  began,  although  many  pris- 
oners were  captured  and  released  on  parole,  on  both  sides,  the 
Federal  authorities  refused  to  enter  into  any  arrangement  for  the 
exchange  of  prisoners,  taking  the  absurd  position  that  they 
would  not  treat  with  "rebels"  in  any  way  which  would  recog- 
nize them  as  "belligerents."  The  English  government  had 
already  recognized  us  as  "belligerents"  as  early  as  May,  1861. 
As  the  Earl  of  Derby  tersely  said  in  the  House  of  Lords  : 

"The  Northern  states  could  not  claim  the  rights  of 
belligerents  for  themselves,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  deal 
with  other  parties,  not  as  belligerents,  but  as  rebels." 

After  awhile  the  pressure  on  the  Federal  authorities  by 
friends  of  the  prisoners  was  so  great  that  they  were  induced  to 
agree  to  a  cartel  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners  on  the  very  basis 
offered  by  the  Confederates  in  the  beginning.  These  negotia- 
tions were  commenced  on  the  14th  of  February,  1862,  Gen.  John 
E.  Wool  representing  the  Federals  and  Gen.  Howell  Cobb  the 
Confederates,  the  only  unsettled  point  at  that  time  being  that 
General  Wool  was  unwilling  that  each  party  should  agree  to  pay 
the  expenses  of  transporting  their  prisoners  to  the  frontier;  and 


this  he  promised  to  refer  to  his  Government.  At  a  second  inter- 
view on  March  1st,  1862,  General  Wool  informed  General  Cobb 
that  his  Government  would  not  consent  to  pay  these  expenses, 
and  thereupon  General  Cobb  promptly  receded  from  this  demand 
and  agreed  to  accept  the  terms  offered  by  General  Wool.  Gene- 
ral Wool  had  stated  in  the  beginning  that  he  alone  toas  clothed 
with  full  power  to  effect  this  arrangement,  but  he  now  stated  that 
his  Government  "  had  changed  his  instructions."  And  so  these 
negotiations  were  broken  off,  and  matters  left  as  before  they 
were  begun. 

The  real  reason  for  this  change  was  that  in  the  meantime  the 
capture  of  Forts  Henry  and  Donaldson  had  given  the  Federals 
a  preponderance  in  the  number  of  prisoners.  Soon,  however, 
Jackson's  valley  campaign,  the  battles  around  Eichmond,  and 
other  Confederate  successes,  gave  the  Confederates  the  prepon- 
derance, and  this  change  of  conditions  induced  the  Federals  to 
consent  to  terms,  to  which  the  Confederates  had  always  been 
ready  to  accede. 

And  so  on  July  22nd,  1862,  Gen.  John  A.  Dix,  representing 
the  Federals,  and  Gen.  D.  H.  Hill,  the  Confederates,  at  Haxall's 
Landing,  on  James  river,  in  Charles  City  county,  entered  into 
the  cartel  which  thereafter  formed  the  basis  for  the  exchange  of 
prisoners  during  the  rest  of  the  war  whenever  it  was  allowed  by 
the  Federals  to  be  in  operation.  Article  four  of  this  cartel  pro- 
vided as  follows  : 

"  All  prisoners  of  war,  to  be  discharged  on  parole,  in 
ten  days  after  the  capture,  and  the  prisoners  now  held 
and  those  hereafter  taken,  to  be  transferred  to  the  points 
mutually  agreed  upon,  at  the  expense  of  the  capturing 
party. ' ' 

Article  six  provided  that — 

"The  stipulations  and  provisions  above  mentioned 
are  to  be  of  binding  obligation  during  the  continuance 
of  the  war,  it  matters  not  which  party  may  have  the 
surplus  of  prisoners."  *  *  *  *  "  That  all  prison- 
ers, of  whatever  arm  of  the  service,  are  to  be  exchanged 
or  paroled  in  ten  days  from  the  time  of  their  capture, 
if  it  be  practicable  to  transfer  them  to  their  own  lines 
in  that  time;  if  not,  as  soon  thereafter  as  practicable." 

Article  nine  provided  that — 


"In  case  any  misunderstanding  shall  arise  in  regard 
to  any  clause  or  stipulation  in  the  foregoing  articles,  it 
is  mutually  agreed,  that  such  misunderstanding  shall 
not  iuterrupt  the  release  of  prisoners  on  parole,  as 
herein  provided;  but  shall  be  made  the  subject  of  friend- 
ly explanation,  in  order  that  the  object  of  this  agree- 
ment may  neither  be  defeated  nor  postponed." 

It  is  readily  seen  that  both  General  Dix  and  General  Hill 
acted  with  the  utmost  good  faith  in  the  formation  of  this  cartel, 
with  a  common  purpose  in  view,  to  the  carrying  out  of  which 
each  pledged  the  good  faith  of  his  Government;  and  in  Article 
9  they  made  ample  provision  to  prevent  any  cessation  in  the 
work  of  exchanging  promptly  all  prisoners  captured  during  the 
war.  And  we  now  propose  to  show  that  this  would  have  been 
the  case  but  for  the  bad  faith  and  bad  conduct  of  the  represent- 
atives of  the  Federal  Government. 

As  was  contemplated  by  the  cartel,  each  of  the  two  Govern- 
ments appointed  its  Commissioners  of  Exchange  to  carry  it  into 
execution.  On  the  part  of  the  Federals,  Major  General  E.  A. 
Hitchcock  was  appointed,  with  two  assistants,  Col.  Wm.  H. 
Ludlow,  and  Captain  (afterward  Brigadier-General)  John  E. 
Mulford,  as  assistants.  On  the  part  of  the  Confederates,  the  late 
Judge  Robert  Ould,  of  the  Richmond  (Va.)  Bar,  was  the  sole 
representative.  The  writer  had  the  privilege  of  knowing  both 
General  Mulford  and  Judge  Ould  well,  and,  in  his  opinion,  no 
better  selections  could  have  been  made  by  their  respective  Gov- 
ernments. Judge  Ould  was  a  mau  of  splendid  judicial  bearing, 
singular  honesty  of  purpose  and  kindness  of  heart,  with  capacity 
both  in  speaking  and  in  writing,  to  represent  his  Government 
with  unsurpassed  ability.  General  Mulford  was  a  man  of  fair 
abilities,  and  of  great  kindness  of  heart.  Of  General  Hitchcock 
and  Colonel  Ludlow,  he  can  only  speak  from  what  they  disclose 
of  their  characteristics  in  their  letters.  General  Hitchcock  ex- 
hibits a  profound  distrust  of  what  he  terms  the  "  rebel  "  authori- 
ties in  all  of  his  letters,  and  frequently  displays  a  temper  and 
impatience,  seemingly,  not  warranted  by  the  surrounding  cir- 
cumstances. Colonel  Ludlow,  at  times,  exhibits  great  fairness; 
at  other  times,  manifests  unfairness,  but  always  displays  shrewd- 
ness and  ability. 

There  is  abundant  evidence  in  these  records  to  show  that 
the  true  reason  why  Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  reply  to  Mr.  Davis'  let- 


ter  of  July  6th,  1861,  hereinbefore  quoted,  was  that  he  and  the 
other  authorities  at  Washington  did  not  intend  from  the 
beginning  to  conduct  the  war,  in  any  of  its  features,  according 
to  the  recognized  principles  of  civilized  warfare,  although  they 
had  adopted  the  rules  of  Dr.  Leiber  apparently  for  this  purpose, 
as  the  law  to  govern  the  conduct  of  their  armies  in  the  field.  As 
conclusive  evidence  of  this,  it  was  shown  in  our  last  report  that 
on  the  very  day  of  the  date  of  the  cartel,  the  Federal  Secretary 
of  War,  by  order  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  issued  an  order  to  the  Military 
Commanders  in  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida, 
Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Texas  and  Arkansas,  directing 
them  to  seize  and  use  any  property  belonging  to  citizens  of  the 
Confederacy  which  might  be  "  necessary  or  convenient  for  their 
several  commands,"  without  making  any  provision  for  compen- 
sation therefor.  About  the  same  time,  and,  doubtless,  by  the 
same  authority,  Generals  Pope  and  Steinwehr  issued  their  infam- 
ous orders,  also  referred  to  in  our  last  report.  All  of  these  orders 
were  so  contrary  to  all  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  and  espe- 
cially to  those  adopted  by  the  Federal  authorities  themselves, 
that  on  August  1st,  1862  (just  ten. days  from  the  date  of  the 
cartel),  the  Confederate  authorities  were  driven  to  the  necessity 
of  issuing  an  order  declaring,  among  other  things,  that  Pope 
and  Steinwehr  and  the  commissioned  officers  of  their  commands, 
11  had  chosen  for  themselves  (to  use  General  Lee's  words)  the 
position  of  robbers  and  murderers,  and  not  that  of  public  enemies, 
entitled,  if  captured,  to  be  treated  as  prisoners  of  war,."  Later 
on,  in  the  fall  of  that  year,  came  the  barbarous  orders  and  con- 
duct of  Generals  Milroy,  Butler  and  Hunter,  which  led  to  the 
proclamations  of  outlawry  against  these  officers,  and  directing 
that  they  and  their  commissioned  officers  should  not  be  treated, 
if  captured,  as  prisoners  of  war,  and,  therefore,  should  not  be 
exchanged,  but  kept  in  confinement. 

In  September,  1862,  Mr.  Lincoln's  emancipation  proclama- 
tion was  issued,  to  take  effect  January  1st  following,  which 
caused  Mr.  Davis  to  issue  another  proclamation  on  December 
23rd,  1862,  directing  that  any  Federal  officer  who  should  be 
arrested  whilst  either  enrolling,  or  in  command  of  negroes,  who 
were  slaves,  should  be  turned  over  to  the  authorities  of  the  sev- 
eral states  in  which  the  offenses  were  committed,  and  punished 
for  the  crime  of  inciting  servile  insurrection.     These  several 


10 

proclamations  of  Mr.  Davis  created  considerable  uneasiness 
among  the  Federal  authorities,  and  furnished  the  very  pretext 
for  whicli  they  were  doubtless  longing,  for  either  violating,  or 
suspending,  the  terms  of  the  cartel.  And  so  on  January  16th, 
1863,  we  find  Colonel  Ludlow  writing  to  his  superior,  General 
Hitchcock,  as  follows  : 

11 1  have  the  honor  to  enclose  to  you  a  copy  of  the 
Eicnmond  L'nquirer,  containing  Jeff.  Davis'  message. 
His  determination,  avowed  in  most  irsolent  terms,  to 
deliver  to  the  several  state  authorities  all  commissioned 
officers  of  the  United  States  that  may  hereafter  be  cap- 
tured, will,  I  think,  be  persevered  in.  You  will  remem- 
ber that  after  the  proclamation  of  Jeff.  Davis,  of  Dec. 
23rd,  1862,  I  urgently  advised  another  interview  (the 
last  one  I  had  with  Mr.  Ould,  and  in  which  very 
important  exchanges  were  declared).  I  then  did  so 
anticipating  that  the  cartel  might  be  broken,  and  wish- 
ing to  make  sure  of  the  discharge  from  their  parole  of 
10,000  of  our  men.  This  was  effected,  and  in  a  manner 
so  advantageous  to  our  Government  that  we  gained  in 
the  count  of  20,000  exchanged,  about  7,000  men.  I  had 
almost  equally  good  success  in  the  exchange  declared  on 
November  11th,  1862.  If  an  open  rupture  should  now 
occur,  in  the  execution  of  the  cartel,  we  are  well  pre- 
pared for  it.  I  am  endeavoring  to  get  away  from  the 
Confederate  prisons  all  our  officers  captured  previously 
to  the  date  of  the  message  of  Jeff.  Davis  (the  12th 
instant),  with  what  success  I  shall  know  early  next 
week." 

(See  Series  II.,  Vol.  V.,  Eeb.,  Eec.  Serial  118,  p.  181.) 

This  transaction,  of  which  we  find  Col.  Ludlow  thus  boast- 
ing to  his  superior,  will  surely  be  sufficient  to  establish  his  repu- 
tation for  shrewdness  as  a  trader,  or  exchanger.  So  flagrant  had 
been  the  violations  of  the  cartel  and  the  abuses  committed  by 
the  Federals  in  pretending  to  carry  it  out,  (some  of  which  are 
confessed,  as  we  have  just  seen,  by  Col.  Ludlow),  that  on  Janu- 
ary 17th,  1863,  Judge  Ould  wrrote  Col.  Ludlow,  complaining  in 
the  strongest  terms,  and  stating  that  if  he  (Col.  Ludlow)  had 
any  Confederate  officer  in  his  possession,  or  on  parole,  he  would 
be  exchanged  for  his  equivalent.  But  that  beyond  that,  he 
would  not,  and  could  not,  parole  commissioned  officers  then,  in 
his  possession,  but  would  continue  to  parole  non-commis&\0inedN 
officers  and  privates.     He  said  : 


11 

"This  course  has  been  forced  on  the  Confederate 
Government,  not  only  by  the  refusal  of  the  authorities 
of  the  United  States  to  respond  to  the  repeated  applica- 
tions of  this  Government  in  relation  to  the  execution  of 
Munford,  but  by  their  persistence  in  retaining  Confede- 
rate officers  who  were  entitled  to  parole  and  exchange. ' ' 

He  said: 

"You  have  now,  of  captures  that  are  by  no  means 
recent,  many  officers  of  the  Confederate  service,  who 
are  retained  in  your  military  prisons  East  and  West. 
Applications  have  been  made  for  the  release  of  same 
without  success,  and  others  have  been  kept  in  confine- 
ment so  long  as  to  justify  the  conclusion  that  you  refuse 
both  to  parole  and  exchange."     Id.,  pp.  186-7. 

Judge  Ould  then  called  Col.  Ludlow's  attention  to  several 
instances  of  these  abuses  and  mistakes,  and  asked  that  they  be 
corrected.     In  his  letter  of  January  25th,  1863,  he  says  : 

"If  any  injustice  has  been  done  to  you  by  our  agree- 
ment, about  reducing  officers  to  privates,  or  in  any 
other  subject  matter,  I  will  promptl y  redress  it."  *  * 
"There  must  be  many  officers  in  your  and  our  pos- 
session who,  by  our  agreement,  made  at  the  last 
interview,  were  declared  exchanged.  Such  certainly 
ought  to  be  mutually  delivered  up.  The  excess  is  on 
our  side,  but  I  will  stand  it  because  I  have  agreed  to  it. 
E  must,  however,  insist  upon  the  immediate  delivery  of 
such  of  our  officers  as  are  included  in  the  agreement." 
P.  213. 

On  December  30th,  1862,  the  following  order  was  issued  by 
Gen.  H.  W.  Halleck,  signing  himself  as  "Gen'1-in-Chief :  " 

"No  officers,  prisoners  of  war,  will  be  released  on 
parole  till  further  orders."     Id.,  p.  248. 

This,  he  said,  was  done  in  consequence  of  the  course  then 
being  pursued  by  the  Confederate  authorities.  But  notwith- 
standing this  order,  and  this  action  of  the  Confederate  authori- 
ties here  complained  of,  exchanges  seem  to  have  gone  on,  the 
Commissioner  on  either  side  constantly  complaining  that  his 
adversary  had  broken  the  cartel.  And  on  April  11th,  1863,  we 
find  Judge  Ould  again  writing  Colonel  Ludlow,  saying  : 

"I  am  very  much  surprised  at  your  refusal  to  deliver 
officers  for  those  of  your  own,  who  have  been  captured, 
paroled  and  released  by  us  since  the  date  of  the  procla- 


12 

Hiation  and  message  of  President  Davis.  The  refusal 
is  not  only  a  flagrant  breach  of  the  cartel,  but  can  be 
supported  on  no  rule  of  reciprocity  or  equity."  *  * 
' '  You  have  charged  us  with  breaking  the  cartel.  With 
what  sort  of  justice  can  that  allegation  be  supported, 
when  you  delivered  only  a  few  days  ago  over  ninety 
officers,  most  of  whom  had  been  forced  to  languish  and 
suffer  in  prison  for  months  before  we  were  compelled, 
by  that  and  other  reasons,  to  issue  the  retaliatory  order 
of  which  you  complain  ?  Those  ninety-odd  are  not  half 
of  those  whom  you  unjustly  held  in  prison.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  defy  you  to  name  the  ease  of  one  who  is 
confined  by  us,  whom  our  Government  has  declared  ex- 
changed. Is  it  your  idea  that  we  are  to  be  bound  by 
every  strictness  of  the  cartel,  while  you  are  at  liberty 
to  violate  it  for  months,  and  that,  too,  not  only  in  a  few 
cases,  but  hundreds'?"  *  *  *  "  If  captivity,  priva- 
tion and  misery  are  to  be  the  fate  of  officers  on  both 
sides  hereafter,  let  God  judge  between  us.  I  have 
struggled  in  this  matter  as  if  it  had  been  a  matter  of 
life  and  death  to  me.  I  am  heart-sick  at  the  termina- 
tion, but  I  have  no  self  reproaches."     Id.,  p.  469. 

In  Ludlow's  reply  to  this  letter,  he  simply  says  Judge  Ould 
was  mistaken  in  his  charges  and  complaints,  but  he  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  pointing  out  one  single  instance  in  which  Judge  Ould 
was  in  error. 

Notwithstanding  all  these  charges  and  counter  charges,  ex- 
changes still  went  on,  and  so  we  find  Colonel  Ludlow  reporting 
to  Secretary  Stanton  on  May  5th,  1863,  as  follows  : 

"I  have  just  returned  from  City  Point,  and  have 
brought  with  me  all  my  officers  who  have  been  held  by 
the  Confederates,  and  whom  I  send  to  City  Point  to- 
night. I  have  made  the  following  declarations  of  ex- 
changes: 

(1)  "All  officers  and  enlisted  men,  and  all  persons, 
whatever  may  have  been  their  classification  or  char- 
acter, who  have  been  delivered  at  City  Point  up  to  the 
6th  of  May,  1863. 

(2)  ''All  officers  who  have  been  captured  and  re- 
leased on  parole  up  to  April  1st,  1863,  wherever  they 
may  have  been  captured."  *  *  *  Id.,  p.  559. 
See,  also,  p.  564. 

It  seems  that  the  Confederate  Congress  had  refused  to  sus- 
tain Mr.  Davis,  in  his  suggested  retaliatory  measures  about  the 
treatment  of  officers  to  the  extent  he  had  recommended,  and  so, 


13 

exchanges  went  on  with  the  result  as  just  above  reported,  up  to 
May  6th,  1863,  and  with  but  few,  if  any,  complaints  against  the 
Confederates  of  ill  treatment  to  prisoners  to  that  time.  But  how 
does  the  case  stand,  iu  this  respect,  at  this  time,  with  the  Fed- 
erals? We  have  only  space  here  for  two  quotations  to  show  this, 
and  both  of  these  are  from  their  own  witnesses,  and  it  would 
seem  that  these  would  offset  "Anderson  ville, "  "The  Libby,"  or 
any  other  place  this  side  of  the  infernal  regions. 

On  February  9th,  1862,  Judge  Ould  wrote  Col.  Ludlow: 

"I  see  from  your  own  papers,  that  some  dozen  of  our 
men  captured  at  Arkansas  Pass  were  allowed  to  freeze 
to  death  in  one  night  at  Camp  Douglas.  I  appeal  to 
our  common  instincts,  against  such  atrocious  inhu- 
manity."    Id.,  p.  257. 

We  find  no  denial  of  this  charge.  On  May  10th,  1863,  Dr. 
Wm.  H.  Van  Buren,  of  New  York,  on  behalf  of  the  United 
States  "Sanitary  Commission,"  reported  to  the  Secretary  of 
War  the  condition  of  the  hospitals  of  the  prisoners  at  Camp 
Douglas,  near  Chicago,  and  Gratiot  street,  St.  Louis.  In  this 
report  he  incorporates  the  statements  of  Drs.  Hun  and  Cogswell, 
of  Albany,  1ST.  Y.,  who  had  been  employed  by  the  Sanitary  Com- 
mission to  inspect  hospitals,  and  Dr.  Van  Buren  commends  these 
gentlemen  as  men  of  high  character  and  eminent  fitness  for  the 
work  to  which  they  had  been  assigned.  It  is  from  the  statement 
of  these  Northern  gentlemen  that  we  quote.  They  caption  their 
report  from  Albany  April  5th,  1863,  and  say,  among  other 
things,  as  follows: 

"In  our  experience,  we  have  never  witnessed  so 
painful  a  spectacle  as  that  presented  by  these  wretched 
inmates;  without  change  of  clothing,  covered  with  ver- 
min, they  lie  in  cots,  without  mattresses,  or  with 
mattresses  furnished  by  private  charity,  without  sheets 
or  bedding  of  any  kind,  except  blankets,  often  in  rags; 
in  wards  reeking  with  filth  and  foul  air.  The  stench  is 
most  offensive.  We  carefully  avoid  all  exaggeration  of 
statement,  but  we  give  some  facts  which  speak  for  them- 
selves. From  January  27th,  1863,  when  the  prisoners 
(in  number  about  3,800)  arrived  at  Camp  Douglas,  to 
February  18th,  the  day  of  our  visit,  385  patients  have 
been  admitted  to  the  hospitals,  of  whom  130  have  died. 
This  mortality  of  33  per  cent,  does  not  express  the 
whole  truth,  for  of  the  148  patients  then  remaining  in 


14 

the  hospital  a  large  number  must  have  since  died. 
Besides  this,  130  prisoners  have  died  in  barracks,  not 
having  been  able  to  gain  admission  even  to  the  misera- 
ble accommodations  of  the  hospital,  and  at  the  time  of 
our  visit  150  persons  were  sick  in  barracks  waiting  for 
room  in  hospital.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  260  out  of 
the  3,800  prisoners  had  died  in  twenty-one  days,  a  rate 
of  mortality  which,  if  continued,  would  secure  their 
total  extermination  in  about  320  days." 

Then  they  go  on  to  describe  the  conditions  at  St.  Louis, 
showing  them  to  be  even  worse  than  at  Chicago,  aud  after  stating 
that  the  conditions  of  these  prisons  are  "  discreditable  to  a 
Christian  people,"  they  add  : 

"It  surely  is  not  the  intention  of  our  Government  to 
place  these  prisoners  in  a  position  which  will  secure 
their  extermination  by  pestilence  in  less  than  a  year.'-' 
See,  also,  report  of  U.  S.  Surgeon  A.  M.  Clark,  Series 
IL,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  371.     See,  also,  Id.,  p.  113. 

Is  it  not  a  little  surprising,  that  when  the  representatives  of 
this  same  "Sanitary  Commission"  published  their  savage  and 
partisan  report  in  September,  1864,  as  to  the  way  their 
prisoners  were  being  treated  in  Southern  prisons,  which  report 
they  had  adorned  with  pictures  of  skeletons  alleged  to  have  come 
from  our  prison  hospitals,  they  did  not  make  some  allusion  to 
the  condition  of  things  as  found  by  them  in  their  own  hospitals'? 

But  as  further  evidence  of  violations  of  the  cartel,  it  will 
be  seen  that  on  May  13th,  1863,  Judge  Ould  wrote  to  Col.  Lud- 
low again  calling  his  attention  the  "large  number  of  our  officers 
captured  long  since  and  still  held  by  them";  threatened  retalia- 
tion if  the  unjust  and  harsh  course  then  pursued  by  the  Federals 
towards  our  officers  was  persevered  in;  and  concluded  as  follows  : 

"Nothing  is  now  left  as  to  those  whom  our  protests 
have  failed  to  release,  but  to  resort  to  retaliation.  The 
Confederate  Government  is  anxious  to  avoid  a  resort  to 
that  harsh  measure.  In  its  name  I  make  a  final  appeal 
for  that  justice  to  our  imprisoned  officers  and  men  tohich 
your  own  agreements  hove  declared  to  be  their  due." 
Id.,  p.  607. 

Again,  on  the  next  day,  he  wrote,  naming  several  of  Mosby's 
men  who  had  been  carried  to  the  Old  Capitol  prison.  He  then 
said  : 


15 

"They  are  retained  under  the  allegation  that  they  are 
bushwhackers  and  guerillas.  Mosby's  command  is  in 
the  Confederate  service,  in  every  sense  of  the  term. 
He  is  regularly  commissioned,  and  his  force  is  as 
strictly  Confederate  as  any  in  our  army.  Why  is  this 
done?  This  day  1  have  cleaned  every  prison  in  my 
control  as  far  as  I  know.  If  there  is  any  detention 
anywhere,  let  me  know  and  I  will  rectify  it.  I  am 
compelled  to,  complain  of  this  thing  in  almost  every 
communication.  You  will  not  deem  me  passionate  when 
I  assure  you  it  will  not  be  endured  any  longer.  If 
these  men  are  not  delivered,  a  stern  retaliation  will  be 
made  immediately."    Id.,  p.  632. 

And  again  on  the  22nd  of  May,  1863,  he  wrote,  saying  : 

"You  are  well  aware,  that  for  the  last  six  months  I 
have  been  presenting  to  you  lists  of  Confederate  officers 
and  soldiers  and  Confederate  citizens,  who  have  de- 
tained by  your  authorities  in  their  prisons.  Some  of 
these,  on  my  remonstance,  have  been  released  and  sent 
to  us,  but  by  far  the  greater  number  remain  in  cap- 
tivity." 

He  then  tells  Colonel  Ludlow,  that  he  is  satisfied  that  he  (Ludlow) 
has  tried  to  have  these  prisoners  released,  but  without  avail, 
and  then  tells  him  again  that  the  Confederates  were  compelled 
to  notify  him  that  they  must  resort  to  retaliation  ;  but  telling 
him  further  that  he  will  be  notified  of  each  case  in  which  this 
course  is  pursued. 

On  the  same  day  he  wrote  another  letter  calling  Ludlow's 
attention  to  the  report  that  Captains  McGraw  and  Corbin  had 
been  tried  and  sentenced  to  be  shot  for  recruiting  for  the  Con- 
federates in  Kentucky,  and  saying  that  if  these  men  were 
executed  the  Confederate  authorities  had  selected  two  captains 
for  execution  in  retaliation;  and  he  concludes  this  letter  with 
this  significant  language  : 

"In  view  of  the  awful  vortex  into  which  things  are 
plunging,  I  give  you  notice,  that  in  the  event  of  the  ex- 
ecution of  these  persons,  retaliation  to  an  equal  extent 
at  least,  will  be  visited  upon  your  own  officers,  and  if 
that  is  found  ineffectual  the  number  will  be  increased. 
The  Great  Ruler  of  Nations  must  judge  who  is  respon- 
sible for  the  initiation  of  this  chapter  of  horrors." 
Id.,  p.  690-1. 

In  a  letter  of  January  5th,  1863,  Judge  Ould  wrote  : 


16 

"Nothing  is  nearer  my  heart  than  to  prevent  on  either 
side  a  resort  to  retaliation.  Even  if  made  necessary  by 
course  of  events,  it  is  much  to  be  deplored.  These  are 
not  only  my  own  personal  views,  but  those  of  my 
Government." 

It  is  almost  unnecessary  to  say  that,  of  course,  these  com- 
plaints and  threats  and  appeals,  would  not  have  been  made,  at 
the  time,  and  in  the  manner  they  were  made,  had  not  just  cause 
existed  therefor,  and  that  the  Federal  authorities  were  solely 
responsible  for  the  condition  of  affairs  then  existing.  (See  another 
letter  of  the  same  date  on  the  same  page  as  to  political  prisoners. ) 

This  being  the  condition  of  things,  on  May  25th,  1863,  the 
following  order  was  issued  by  the  Federals: 

"War  Department,  Washington,  D    C,  May  25,  18o3. 

"General  Scliofield: 

u1$q  Confederate  officer  will  be  paroled  or  exchanged 
till  further  orders.  They  will  be  kept  in  close  confine- 
ment, and  be  strongly  guarded.  Those  already  paroled 
will  be  confined. 

"H.  W.  Halleck, 

General-in-Chief. ' ' 

And  similar  orders  were  sent  to  all  commanders  of  Federal 
forces  throughout  the  country.  Id.,  p.  696.  See,  also,  pp. 
706-7,  722. 

It  is  surely  unnecessary  then,  after  reading  these  letters,  and 
this  order,  to  say  which  side  was  responsible  for  violations  of 
the  cartel  while  it  remained  in  operation,  and  for  the  suspension 
of  its  operations,  as  well  as  for  the  first  maltreatment  of  prisoners. 

With  the  exception  of  exchanges  in  individual  cases,  this 
suspension  of  the  cartel  continued.  So  that,  on  July  2nd,  1863, 
Mr.  Davis  addressed  a  letter  to  Mr.  Lincoln  (which  we  have 
never  seen  before),  in  which  he  said,  among  other  things,  after 
referring  to  the  differences  that  had  arisen  between  the  Commis- 
sioners in  carrying  out  the  cartel,  and  the  hardships  incurred  by 
reason  of  its  suspension— as  follows: 

"I  believe  I  have  just  ground  of  complaint  against 
the  officers  and  forces  under  your  command,  for  breach  of 
trust  of  the  cartel,  and  being  myself  ready  to  execute  it 
at  all  times,  and  in  good  faith,  I  am  not  justified  in 
doubting  the  existence  of  the  same  disposition  on  your 
part.     In  addition  to  this  matter,   I  have  to  complain 


17 

of  the  conduct  of  your  officers  and  troops  in  many  parts 
of  the  country,  who  violate  all  the  rules  of  war  by 
carrying  on  hostilities,  not  only  against  armed  foes,  but 
against  non-combatants,  aged  men,  women  and  children, 
while  others  not  only  seize  such  property  as  is  required 
for  the  use  of  your  troops,  but  destroy  all  private  pro- 
perty within  their  reach,  even  agricultural  implements, 
and  openly  avow  the  purpose  of  seeking  to  subdue  the 
population  of  the  districts  where  they  are  operating  by 
starvation  that  must  result  from  the  destruction  of 
standing  crops  and  agricultural  tools.  Still  again 

others  of  your  officers  in  different  districts  have  recently 
taken  the  lives  of  prisoners  who  fell  into  their  power, 
and  justify  their  act  by  asserting  a  right  to  treat  as 
spies  the  military  officers  aud  enlisted  men  under  my 
command  who  may  penetrate  into  States  recognized  by 
us  as  our  allies  in  the  warfare  now  waged  against  the 
United  States,  but  claimed  by  the  latter  as  having  re- 
fused to  engage  in  such  warfare.  I  have  therefore  on 
different  occasions  been  forced  to  make  complaints  of 
these  outrages,  and  to  ask  from  you,  that  you  either 
avow  or  disclaim  having  authorized  them,  and  have 
failed  to  obtain  such  answer  as  the  usages  of  civilized 
warfare  require  to  be  given  in  such  cases.  These 
usages  justify  and  indeed  require  redress  by  retaliation 
as  the  proper  means  of  repressing  such  cruelties  as  are 
not  permitted  in  warfare  between  Christian  peoples.  I 
have  notwithstanding  refrained  from  the  exercise  of 
such  retaliation  because  of  its  obvious  tendency  to  lead 
to  war  of  indiscriminate  massacre  on  both  sides,  which 
would  be  a  spectacle  so  shocking  to  humanity,  and  so 
disgraceful  to  the  age  in  which  we  live,  and  the  religion 
we  profess,  that  I  cannot  contemplate  it  without  a  feel- 
ing of  horror  that  I  am  disinclined  to  doubt  you  would 
share.  With  the  view  then  of  making  our  last  solemn 
attempt  to  avert  such  calamities,  and  to  attest  my  earn- 
est desire  to  prevent  them,  if  possible,  I  have  selected 
the  bearer  of  this  letter,  the  Hon.  Alexander  H.  Steph- 
ens, as  a  Military  Commissioner,  to  proceed  to  your 
headquarters,  under  flag  of  truce,  there  to  confer  and 
agree  on  the  subjects  above  mentioned;  and  I  do  hereby 
authorize  the  said  Alexander  H.  Stephens  to  arrange  and 
settle  all  differences  and  disputes,  which  have  arisen,  or 
may  arise  in  the  execution  of  the  cartel  for  exchange  of 
prisoners  of  war,  heretofore  agreed  on  between  our  re- 
spective land  and  naval  forces;  also  to  prevent  further 
misunderstandings,  as  to  the  terms  of  said  cartel,  and 
finally  to  enter  into  such  arrangement  and  understand- 


18 

ing  about  the  mode  of  carrying  on  hostilities  between 
the  belligerents  as  shall  confine  the  severities  of  the  war 
within  such  limits  as  are  rightfully  imposed,  not  only 
by  modern  civilization,  but  by  our  common  Christian- 
ity."    Eeb.  Bee.,  Series  II. ,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  75-6. 

On  the  4th  of  July,  1863,  Mr.  Stephens,  accompanied  by 
Judge  Ould,  took  the  foregoing  and  proceeded  down  the  James 
river  under  flag  of  truce,  for  the  purpose  of  delivering  the  letter 
and  of  conferring  with  Mr.  Lincoln.  They  were  stopped  by  the 
blockading  squadron,  under  the  command  of  Acting  Rear  Ad- 
miral S.  P.  Lee,  near  Newport  News,  and  Mr.  Stephens  then 
communicated  to  Admiral  Lee  the  nature  of  his  mission.  This 
communication  to  Admiral  Lee  was  reported  to  the  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  Mr.  Gideon  Wells,  and  by  the  latter  to  the  Secretary 
of  War,  Mr.  Edwin  M.  Stanton.  After  Mr.  Stephens  had  been 
kept  for  two  days  awaiting  a  reply,  he  was  informed  that  the 
Secretary  of  War  refused  to  permit  him  to  proceed  further  on 
the  ground,  that  "the  customary  agents  and  channels  are  con- 
sidered adequate  for  all  needful  communications  and  confer- 
ences."    See  Mr.  Stephens'  report,  Id.,  p.   94. 

Between  the  date  of  Mr.  Davis'  letter  and  the  6th  of  July, 
when  the  refusal  came  to  allow  Mr.  Stephens  to  proceed  further 
on  his  attempted  mission  of  mercy  and  j  ustice,  Gettysburg  had 
been  fought,  and  Vicksburg  had  fallen,  and  these  disasters  to 
the  Confederates  had  not  only  made  the  Federals  arrogant,  but 
had  also  given  them  for  the  first  time  since  the  cartel  a  prepon- 
derance of  prisoners,  and  hence  from  that  time  forward,  their 
interest  and  their  policy  was  to  throw  every  obstacle  possible  in 
the  way  of  the  further  exchanges  of  prisoners. 

The  foregoing  letter  of  Mr.  Davis  exhibits  the  loftiest  states- 
manship and  Christian  character,  and  should  inspire  us  with  a 
new  desire  to  do  honor  to  his  memory,  as  well  as  fill  us  with 
pride  that  we  had  as  our  civil  leader,  one  so  noble,  so  humane, 
so  just,  and  so  true. 

It  is  interesting  to  us  to  know  that  Mr.  Davis  and  General 
Lee  were  in  full  accord  in  their  views  on  the  question  of  retaliat- 
ing on  prisoners  for  offences  committed  by  others.  On  the  13th 
of  July,  1864,  Mr.  Seddon,  the  Confederate  Secretary  of  War, 
wrote  to  General  Lee  calling  his  attention  to  the  murder  of  two 
citizens,  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia,  by  General  Hunter's  orders, 


10 

oi'  by  his  command,  suggesting  that  some  course  of  retaliation 
should  be  put  in  operation  to  prevent  further  atrocities  of  the 
kind,  and  asking  General  Lee  "what  measure  of  punishment  or 
retaliation  should  be  adopted"?"  (Id.,  p.  164.)  To  this  inquiry 
General  Lee  replied  as  follows: 

"I  have  on  several  occasions  expressed  to  the  Depart- 
ment my  views  as  to  the  system  of  retaliation,  and  re- 
volting as  are  the  circumstances  attending  the  murder 
of  the  citizens  above  mentioned,  I  can  see  nothing  to 
distinguish  them  from  other  outrages  of  a  like  charac- 
ter that  have  from  time  to  time  been  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  Government.  As  I  have  said  before, 
if  the  guilty  parties  could  be  taken,  either  the  officer 
who  commands,  or  the  soldier  who  executes  such  atroc- 
ities, I  should  not  hesitate  to  advise  the  infliction  of  the 
extreme  punishment  they  deserve,  but  I  cannot  think 
it  right  or  politic,  to  make  the  innocent,  after  they 
have  surrendered  as  prisoners  of  ivar,  suffer  for  the 
guilty.''''         *         *         * 

On  this  letter,  Mr.  Davis  makes  this  endorsement : 

1  'The  views  of  General  Lee  I  regard  as  just  and  ap- 
propriate." 

Contrast  this  letter  and  this  endorsement  with  the  treatment 
accorded  by  General  Sherman  to  prisoners,  as  detailed  by  him 
on  page  194,  Vol.  2,  of  his  Memoirs,  and  you  will  see  the  differ- 
ence between  the  conduct  of  a  Christian  and  a  savage. 

But  we  must  proceed  with  the  subject  of  the  exchange 
of  prisoners:  Some  time  in  the  summer  of  1863,  Gen.  S.  A. 
Meredith  was  appointed  a  Federal  Commissioner  of  Exchange, 
and  in  September  Judge  Ould  attempted  to  open  negotiations 
with  him,  for  a  resumption  of  the  cartel.  To  this  attempt  by 
letter  no  reply  was  received.  He  renewed  these  efforts  on  Octo- 
ber 20th,  1863,  saying— 

'  'I  now  propose  that  all  officers  and  men  on  both  sides 
be  released  in  conformity  with  the  provisions  of  the 
cartel,  the  excess  on  one  side  or  the  other,  to  be  on 
parole.  Will  you  accept  tins'?  I  have  no  expectation 
of  an  answer,  but  perhaps  you  may  give  one.  If  it 
does  come,  I  hope  it  will  be  soon."     Id.,  p.  401. 

But  nothing   was   accomplished  by  both   of  these  efforts. 
Some  time  in  November  or  December,  1863,   Gen.   B.   F.  Butler 


20 

was  appointed  the  Federal  Commissioner  of  Exchange.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  this  man  had  been  outlawed  by  the  Confed- 
erate authorities  prior  to  this  time  and  it  was  openly  charged, 
and  generally  believed,  that  this  appointment  was  made  solely 
to  make  communication  between  the  belligerents  the  more  diffi- 
cult by  embarrassing  the  Confederates,  and  consequently  to 
throw  this  additional  obstacle  in  the  way  of  further  exchange  of 
prisoners. 

Immediately  on  taking  charge,  General  Butler  says  he  saw 
Mr.  Stanton,  Secretary  of  War,  and  suggested  that  the  Confed- 
erate prisoners  in  their  hands,  should  be  sheltered,  fed,  clad  and 
otherwise  treated  as  Federal  prisoners  were  being  treated  by  us; 
and  this  suggestion,  he  says,  Mr.  Stanton  at  once  assented  to. 
(See  Butler's  Book,  p.  585.)  In  other  words,  he  says,  in  effect, 
that  because  the  Confederates,  in  their  exhaustion  and  poverty, 
could  not  adequately  supply  the  needs  of  their  men  in  our  prisons, 
therefore,  he  and  the  Federal  Secretary  of  War  thought  it  right  as 
an  act  of  revenge  and  retaliation,  to  withhold  these  comforts  and 
supplies  from  our  men  in  their  prisons  when  they  had  adequate 
means  of  all  kinds  to  supply  the  needs  of  these  men.  Surely 
comment  on  this  statement  is  unnecessary. 

After  Mr.  Lincoln's  emancipation  proclamation  went  into 
effect,  as  we  have  said,  on  January  1st,  1863,  the  Federals  en- 
rolled a  large  number  of  slaves  in  their  armies.  This  greatly 
embarrassed,  as  well  as  exasperated,  the  Confederates.  We 
have  heretofore  stated  the  stand  proposed  by  Mr.  Davis,  and 
recommended  by  him  to  the  Confederate  Congress,  to  turn  over 
the  officers  of  these  colored  troops  to  the  State  authorities  in 
which  any  of  them  might  be  captured,  to  be  tried  in  the  courts 
of  such  State  for  the  crime  of  inciting  servile  insurrection,  and 
that  Congress  refused  to  sustain  him  fully  in  that  recommenda- 
tion. The  question  then  arose  as  to  exchanging  Negro  prisoners. 
The  Federal  authorities  contended  that  where  slaves  were  cap- 
tured by  them,  or  when  they  deserted  and  came  to  them  and 
enlisted  in  their  armies,  they  thereby  became  free,  and  should 
be  placed  on  the  same  footing  with  their  white  soldiers,  in 
respect  to  exchanges,  as  well  as  in  all  other  respects.  The  Con- 
federates, on  the  contrary,  contended  that  whatever  might  be  the 
effect  on  the  status  of  the  slave  by  going  to  the  Federals  and 
enlisting  in  their  armies;  yet  should  they  be  recaptured  by  the 


21 

Confederates,  that  restored  them  to  their  former  status  as  slaves, 
and  they  should  then  be  returned  to  their  masters  or  put  to 
work  by  the  Confederates,  and  their  masters  compensated  for 
their  labor.  In  those  cases  where  the  masters  did  not  reside  in 
the  Confederacy,  or  could  not  be  ascertained,  such  Negroes  were 
to  be  exchanged  as  other  prisoners. 

The  letter  from  General  Lee  to  General  Grant,  stating  the 
Confederate  position  on  this  subject,  is  a  masterpiece,  whether 
considered  from  a  legal,  historical  or  statesmanlike  point  of 
view.  See  Series  II.,  Vol.  VII.,  Serial  No.  120,  p.  1010.  Gen- 
eral Grant  in  his  reply,  seeing  that  he  could  not  answer  the 
arguments  of  General  Lee,  contents  himself  with  saying  on  this 
point: — 

"I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  discussion  of  the  slav- 
ery question;  therefore  decline  answering  the  arguments 
adduced  to  show  the  right  to  return  to  former  owners, 
such  Negroes  as  are  captured  from  our  army."  Id.,  p. 
1018. 

But  to  return  to  General  Butler.  He  says  he  soon  learned 
that  the  Confederates  were  anxious  to  exchange  the  prisoners 
held  by  them,  and  so  he  proposed  to  the  Secretary  of  War  "the 
plan  of  so  exchanging  until  we  had  exhausted  all  our  prisoners 
held  by  the  Bebels,  and  as  we  should  then  have  a  surplus  of 
some  ten  thousand  to  hold  them  as  hostages  for  our  colored 
troops,  of  which  the  Rebels  held  only  hundreds,  and  to  retaliate 
on  this  surpnls,  such  wrongs  as  the  Rebels  might  perpetrate  on 
our  soldiers."     (See  Butler's  Book,  p.  585.) 

At  first  Judge  Ould  refused  to  treat  with  General  Butler  at 
all,  but  in  order  to  resume  the  cartel,  which  he  was  anxious  to 
do,  this  position  was  soon  abandoned,  and  so  on  the  30th  of 
March,  1864,  he,  by  appointment,  conferred  with  General  But- 
ler on  the  subject  of  resuming  the  exchange.  As  the  result  of 
this  interview,  General  Butler  wrote  the  Secretary  of  War,  that 
with  the  exception  of  the  question  about  the  exchange  of 
Negroes,  "all  other  points  of  difference  were  substantially  agreed 
upon,  so  that  the  exchange  might  go  on  readily  and  smoothly,  man 
for  man  and  officer  for  officer  of  equal  rank,  and  officers  for  their 
equivalents  in  privates,  as  settled  by  the  cartel."  (Butler's 
Book,  p.  590.)  Judge  Ould  left  General  Butler  on  'the  31st  of 
March,  with  the  understanding  that  Butler  would  confer  with 


22 

his  Govei'imient  about   the   points   discussed,    and   then  confer 
further  with  him. 

"In  the  meantime  the  exchanges  of  sick  and  wounded 
and  special  exchanges  were  to  go  on." 

On  the  first  day  of  April,  1864,  General  U.  S.  Grant  ap- 
peared on  the  scene,  and  General  Butler  says: 

"To  him  the  state  of  the  negotiations  as  to  exchange 
was  communicated,  and  most  emphatic  verbal  directions 
were  received  from  the  Lieutenant  General  not  to  take 
any  steps  by  which  another  able  bodud  man  should  be 
exchanged  until  further  orders  from  7m?v."  Butler's 
Book,  p.  592. 

And  the  reason  assigned  by  General  Grant  for  this  course 
was  that,  the  exchange  of  prisoners  would  so  strengthen  General 
Lee's  army  as  to  greatly  prolong  the  war,  and  therefore  it  ivas 
better  that  the  prisoners  then  in  confinement  should  remain  so,  no 
matter  what  sufferings  toould  be  entailed  thereby.  "I  said,"  says 
General  Butler,  "I  doubted  whether,  if  we  stopped  exchanging 
man  for  man,  simply  on  the  ground  that  our  soldiers  were  more 
useful  to  us  in  Eebel  prisons  than  they  would  be  in  our  lines, 
however  true  that  might  be,  or  speciously  stated  to  thf1  country, 
the  proposition  could  not  be  sustained  against  the  clamor  that 
would  at  once  arise  against  the  administration."  *  *  *  Id., 
p.  594.     And  he  adds  : — 

''  These  instructions  in  the  then  state  of  negotiations, 
rendered  any  further  exchanges  impossible  and  retalia- 
tion useless." 

This  condition  of  affairs,  for  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Gen- 
eral Grant  was  solely  responsible,  continued,  with  little  change, 
till  the  latter  part  of  January,  1865.  It  was  during  this  inter- 
val of  nearly  a  year  that  the  greatest  sufferings  and  mortality 
occurred.  Finally  the  clamor  was  so  great  for  a  renewal  of  the 
cartel  that  General  Grant  consented,  and  from  that  date  exchanges 
continued  to  the  end  of  the  war,  although  when  a  large  number 
of  prisoners  were  sent  to  General  Schofield,  at  Wilmington,  on 
February  21st,  1865,  he  refused  to  received  them.  Vol.  VIIL, 
p.  286. 

On  the  10th  of  January,  1864,  in  view  of  the  large  numbers 
of  prisoners  then  held  on  both  sides,   and  the  sufferings  conse- 


23 

quently  engendered  thereby,  Judge  Ould  addressed  a  letter  to 
Major  (afterwards  General)  Mulford  proposing  to  deliver  all 
prisoners  held  by  us  for  an  equivalent  held  by  the  Federals. 
But  to  this  letter  no  reply  was  ever  made.  On  the  22nd  of 
August  he  wrote  making  the  same  offer  to  General  Hitchcock, 
but  received  no  reply  to  this  letter  either.  And  so  on  the  31st 
of  August,  1864,  Judge  Ould  published  a  statement  setting  forth 
in  detail  the  efforts  made  by  the  Confederate  authorities  to  carry 
out  the  cartel  in  good  faith,  stating  how  it  had  been  violated 
from  time  to  time,  and  finally  suspended,  solely  by  the  bad  faith 
and  bad  conduct  of  the  Federals. 

On  the  1st  of  October,  1864,  General  Lee  proposed  to  Gen- 
eral Grant  to  renew  the  cartel,  but  no  agreement  could  be 
reached  on  the  subject,  and  so  on  the  6th  of  October,  1864, 
Judge  Ould  addressed  a  letter  to  General  Mulford  and  proposed, 
in  view  of  the  probabilities  of  the  long  confinement  of  prisoners 
on  both  sides,  '  'that  some  measures  be  adopted  for  the  relief  of 
such  as  are  held  by  either  party.  To  that  end,  I  propose,"  says 
he,  "that  each  Government  shall  have  the  privilege  of  forward- 
ing for  the  use  and  comfort  of  such  of  its  prisoners  as  are  held 
by  the  other,  necessary  articles  of  food  and  clothing."  *  *  * 
P.  930. 

Whilst  this  proposition  was  finally  accepted  by  the  Fed- 
erals, it  took  a  whole  month  to  get  their  consent  to  it.  General 
Mulford' s  reply  is  dated  November  6th,  1864.  As  early  in  that 
year  as  January  24th,  Judge  Ould  had  written  General  Hitch- 
cock, proposing  that  the  prisoners  on  each  side  be  attended  by 
their  own  surgeons,  and  that  these  surgeons  should  "act  as  Com- 
missaries, with  power  to  receive  and  distribute  such  contribu- 
tions of  money,  food,  clothing,  and  medicines  as  may  be  forwarded 
for  the  relief  of  prisoners.  I  further  propose,"  (says  he),  "that 
these  surgeons  be  detailed  by  their  own  Governments,  and  that 
they  shall  have  full  liberty  at  any  and  all  times,  through  the 
agents  of  exchange,  to  make  reports,  not  only  of  their  own  acts, 
but  of  any  matters  relating  to  the  welfare  of  prisoners." 

To  this  very  important  and  humane  letter,  Judge  Ould  says, 
"No  reply  was  ever  made."  1  S.  H.  S.  Papers,  128.  If  its 
terms  had  been  accepted  by  the  Federals  (and  nothing  could 
have  been  fairer),  what  sufferings  would  have  been  prevented 
and  how  many  lives  would  have  been  saved1?     But,  as  we  now 


24 

know,  General  Grant  did  not  wish  to  keep  these  men  from  dying 
in  our  prisons.  On  the  contrary,  he  preferred  that  the  Confed- 
erates should  be  burdened  with  caring  for  them  when  living  and 
charged  with  their  death  should  they  die,  and  in  this  way  he 
would  continue  to  "fire  the  Northern  heart"  against  us.  On  the 
same  principle,  and  for  the  same  reason,  he  not  only  refused  to 
agree  to  let  us  purchase  medicine  and  other  necessary  supplies 
for  these  sick  prisoners,  but  refused  for  months  to  receive  from 
ten  to  fifteen  thousand,  which  we  offered  to  deliver  up  without 
receiving  any  equivalent  in  return.  But  above  all  these,  he  did 
not  wish  them  exchanged,  because  of  the  recruits  which  would 
thereby  come  to  General  Lee's  army. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact,  as  shown  by  our  last  report,  it 
was  by  General  Grant's  orders  that  General  Sheridan  devastated 
the  Valley  of  Virginia  as  he  did,  yet  his  considerate  treatment 
of  General  Lee  and  his  men  at  Appomattox  and  his  fidelity  to 
General  Lee's  parole  there  given,  after  the  war,  have  caused  us 
to  think  kindly  of  him  and  to  place  him  in  a  different  class  from 
that  in  which  we  have  placed  Stanton,  Halleck,  Sherm'an,  Sher- 
idan, Pope,  Butler,  Hunter,  Milroy,  and  other  Federal  officers, 
who  took  such  delight  in  treating  us  with  such  wicked  and 
wanton  brutality  during  the  war.  But  as  has  been  recently  said 
of  him,  by  a  distinguished  Northern  writer,  who  was  an  officer 
in  his  army  and  therefore  knew  him  better  than  we  did,  General 
Grant  was  "of  coarse  moral  as  well  as  physical  fibre"  ;  and 
nothing  demonstrates  this  more  clearly  than  the  cruel  and  heart- 
less way  in  which  he  treated  his  own  as  well  as  our  prisoners. 
He  was  so  vindictive  and  cruel  that  on  February  7th,  1865,  he 
refused  to  make  any  arrangement  with  Judge  Ould  whereby  our 
prisoners  could  receive  contributions  of  assistance  from  friends 
at  the  North.  (Vol.  VEIL,  p.  140.)  And  as  we  have  just  seen, 
he  preferred  that  his  own  men  should  die  in  our  prisons,  rather 
than  to  relieve  them,  when  we  offered  to  deliver  them  to  him 
without  any  equivalent  in  return,  because  of  the  great  mortality 
at  Andersonville,  which  we  were  unable  to  avert,  and  of  which 
he  was  fully  apprised. 

At  the  expense  of  being  tedious  then,  we  have  thought  it 
right  to  give  in  much  detail  the  facts  in  relation  to  the  forma- 
tion and  operation  of  the  cartel,  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners, 
and  to  show  clearly  from  the  records,   why  this  cartel  was  sus- 


25 

pended,  and  who  was  responsible  therefor.     And  we  have  done 

so,  becavse  this  conduct  ivas  the  true  cause  of  substantially  all 
the  sufferings  and  deaths  which  came  to  the  prisoners  on  both 
sides  during  the  roar.  That  we  have  shown  that  the  Federal 
Government,  with  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  H.  W.  Halleck  and  U. 
S.  Grant  as  its  representatives,  is  solely  responsible,  we  think 
cannot  be  denied,  and  that  history  will  so  attest. 

Mr.  Charles  A.  Dana,  the  Federal  Assistant  Secretary  of 
War,  in  an  editorial  in  the  New  York  Sun,  commenting  on  the 
letter  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Mr.  James  Lyons,  written  in  reference  to 
the  strictures  of  Mr.  Blaine,  referred  to  in  the  early  part  of  this 
report,  said  as  follows  : 

"This  letter  shows  clearly,  we  think,  that  the  Confed- 
erate authorities,  and  especially  Mr.  Davis,  ought  not 
to  be  held  responsible  for  the  terrible  privations,  suf- 
ferings and  injuries  which  our  men  had  to  endure  while 
they  were  kept  in  Confederate  military  prisons.  The 
fact  is  unquestionable,  that  while  the  Confederates 
desired  to  exchange  prisoners,  to  send  our  men  home, 
and  to  get  back  their  own,  General  Grant  steadily  and 
strenuously  resisted  such  an  exchange."        *        *        * 

"  'It  is  hard  on  our  men  held  in  Southern  prisons,' 
said  Grant,  in  an  official  communication,  mot  to  ex- 
change them;  but  it  is  humane  to  those  left  iu  the  ranks 
to  fight  our  battles.  If  we  commence  a  system  of 
exchanges  which  liberates  all  prisoners  taken,  we  will 
have  to  fight  on  until  the  whole  South  is  exterminated. 
If  we  hold  those  caught  they  are  no  more  than  dead 
men.'         *         *         * 

"This  evidence  [says  Dana]  must  be  taken  as  con- 
clusive. It  proves  that  it  was  not  the  Confederate 
authorities  who  insisted  on  keeping  our  prisoners  in 
distress,  want  and  disease,  but  the  commander  of  our 
own   armies.'' ''         *  *         *  "Moreover   [says 

he]  there  is  no  evidence  whatever,  that  it  was  prac- 
ticable for  the  Confederate  authorities  to  feed  our  pris- 
oners any  better  than  they  were  fed,  or  to  give  them 
any  better  care  and  attention  than  they  received.  The 
food  was  insufficient,  the  care  and  attention  were  in- 
sufficient, no  doubt,  and  yet  the  condition  of  our 
prisoners  was  not  worse  than  that  of  the  Confederate 
soldiers  in  the  field,  except  in  so  far  as  the  condition  of 
those  in  prison  must  of  necessity  be  worse  than  that  of 
men  who  are  free  and  active  outside." 


26 

This  is  the  statement,  as  we  have  said,  of  the  Federal  Assist- 
ant Secretary  of  War,  during  the  war,  and,  of  course,  he  knew 
whereof  he  wrote.  He  was  the  man  by  whose  authority  General 
Miles  put  the  shackles  upon  Mr.  Davis,  when  he  was  in  prison 
at  Fortress  Monroe,  and  was  therefore  prejudiced  in  the  highest 
degree  against  Mr.  Davis  and  the  Confederate  authorities  gener- 
ally. And  his  statement  must  be  taken  as  conclusive  of  this 
ivhole  question. 

When  we  add  to  this  the  pregnant  fact  that  the  report  of 
the  Federal  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Stanton,  dated  July  19,  1866, 
shows  that  of  the  Federal  prisoners  in  Confederate  prisons  only 
22,576  died;  whilbt  of  the  Confederate  prisoners  in  Federal 
prisons  26,436  died,  and  the  report  of  the  Federal  Surgeon  Gen- 
eral Barnes,  published  after  the  war,  showing  that  the  whole 
number  of  Federal  prisoners  captured  and  confined  in  Southern 
prisons  during  the  war  was,  in  round  numbers,  270,000  while 
the  whole  number  of  Confederate  prisoners  captured  and  con- 
fined in  Northern  prisons  was,  in  like  round  numbers,  220,000. 
From  these  two  reports  it  will  be  seen  that  whilst  there  were  50, 000. 
more  prisoners  in  Southern  than  in  Northern  prisons,  during  the 
war,  the  deaths  were  four  thousand  less.  The  per  centum  of 
deaths  in  Southern  prisons  being  under  nine,  while  the  per  centum 
of  deaths  in  Northern  prisons  was  over  twelve. 

We  think  it  useless  to  prolong  this  discussion,  and  feel  con- 
fident that  we  can  safely  submit  our  conduct  on  this,  as  on  every 
other  point  involved  in  the  war,  to  the  j  udgment  of  posterity 
and  the  impartial  historian,  and  can  justly  apply  to  the  Southern 
Confederacy  the  language  of  Philip  Stanhope  Wormsley,  of 
Oxford  University,  England,  in  the  dedication  of  his  translation 
of  Homer's  Iliad  to  General  Eobert  E.  Lee,  "the  most  stainless 
of  earthly  commanders,  and,  except  in  fortune,  the  greatest." 

'  'Thy  Troy  is  fallen,  thy  dear  land 
Is  mared  beneath  the  spoiler's  heel; 
I  cannot  trust  my  trembling  hand 
To  write  the  things  I  feel. 

"Ah  realm  of  tombs:  but  let  her  bear 
This  blazon  to  the  end  of  time 
No  nation  rose  so  white  and  fair 
None  fell  so  pure  of  crime." 


27 


HISTORIES  NOW  USED  IN   OUR  SCHOOLS. 


We  have  but  little  to  add  to  what  was  said  in  our  former 
reports  concerning  the  histories  now  being  taught  in  our  schools, 
except  to  express  our  sincere  regret  that  the  State  Board  of 
Education,  after  first  excluding  it,  reversed  its  action,  and  put 
on  the  list  of  histories  to  be  used  in  our  public  schools,  the  work 
entitled  "Our  Country,"  by  Messrs.  Cooper,  Estill  &  Lemon. 
And  with  the  profoundest  respect  for  each  member  of  the  Board, 
we  think  they  committed  an  unintentional  mistake. 

We  understand  the  Board  based  its  later  action  on  the 
ground,  that  the  edition  of  this  work,  published  in  1901,  con- 
tained important  amendments,  as  well  as  omissions,  not  found 
in  that  of  1896,  which  was,  in  our  opinion,  so  justly  criticised 
and  condemned  by  the  late  Dr.  Hunter  McGuire  and  Bev.  S. 
Taylor  Martin,  D.  D.,  in  their  reports  to  this  camp  in  1899. 
Whilst  it  is  true  that  this  latest  edition  has  been  freed  from 
many  of  the  objections  then  urged  against  the  former  edition, 
and  it  is  apparent  that  the  authors  have  profited  by  these  crit- 
icisms, and  tried  to  adapt  this  "new  issue"  to  the  sentiments 
which  gave  them  birth;  yet  there  are  such  fundamental  objec- 
tions to  this  work  still  that  should,  in  our  opinion,  have  excluded 
it  from  our  schools  forever.  In  the  first  place  we  call  attention 
to  the  fact,  that  the  new  edition  does  not  show  on  the  cover,  or 
elsewhere,  that  it  is  a  new  edition  at  all.  It  is  bound  and 
labeled  just  as  the  former  was;  the  preface  in  the  new  edition  is 
dated  in  1895,  and  is  the  same  as  that  in  the  old;  so  that  if  the 
publishers  were  so  disposed,  they  could  easily  palm  off  on  the 
unwary  teacher  or  child  the  old  for  the  new  edition. 

But  we  have  other  objections  to  the  book  of  a  much  more 
serious  character.  The  first  is,  that  the  authors  are  the  same  in 
both  editions,  and  authors  who  could  state  the  causes  of  the  war, 
as  stated  in  the  first  edition  at  Section  52 1 ,  and  then  state  them 
(when  objected  to)  as  in  Section  520  in  the  new  edition,  are  not, 
in  our  opinion,  such  historians  as  we  should  allow  to  write  the 
history  for  our  children,  it  matters  not  if  they  are  Southern 
writers.  This  smacks  too  much  of  the  methods  said  to  be  pur- 
sued by  the  G.  A.  B.  of  "making  history  to  order."  As  Dr. 
Martin  wrote  of  the  first  edition,  so  think  we  of  this.     He  said: 


28 

"The  book  is  a  feeble  production.  The  controlling 
idea  is  evidently  the  production  of  a  history  that  would 
be  acceptable  to  both  North  and  South." 

To  accomplish  such  a  task  is  (as  it  should  be)  an  impossibil- 
ity. But  we  condemn  this  work  more  for  what  it  fails  to  say 
about  the  causes  of  the  war,  than  for  any  inaccuracies  we  have 
noticed  in  what  it  does  say  on  that  and  other  subjects.  Its  text 
is  on  the  order  of  those  who  say,  "we  thought  we  were  right," 
rather  than  that  "we  were  right."  We  did  know  we  were  right 
then,  and  we  do  know  it  now;  and  we  are  entitled  to  have  this 
told  to  our  children. 

Writers  at  the  North  are  almost  daily  saying  to  the  world, 
that  the  Southern  States  had  the  right  to  secede.  Even  Goldwin 
Smith,  the  most  learned  and  able,  as  well  as  the  most  prejudiced 
historian  against  the  South,  who  has  written  about  the  war,  said 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of  this  year: 

"Few  who  have  looked  into  the  history,  can  doubt 
that  the  Union  originally  was,  and  was  generally  taken 
by  the  parties  to  it  to  be,  a  compact,  dissoluble,  per- 
haps most  of  them  would  have  said,  at  pleasure,  dis- 
soluble certainly  on  breach  of  the  articles  of  the  Union." 

And  that  liberal  and  cultured  statesman  and  writer,  Mr. 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  of  Boston,  in  an  address  delivered  by 
him  in  June  last  in  Chicago,  (whist  as  we  understand  him,  not 
conceding  the  right  of  secession  to  exist  in  1861),  said,  quoting 
from  Donn  Piet's  Life  of  Gen.  George  H.  Thomas,  as  follows: 

"Today  no  impartial  student  of  our  constitutional 
history  can  doubt  for  a  moment,  that  each  state  ratified 
the  form  of  government  submitted  in  the  firm  belief 
that  at  any  time  it  could  withdraw  therefrom." 

With  our  quondam  enemies  thus  telling  the  world  that  we 
had  the  right  to  do  what  we  tried  to  do,  and  only  asked  to  be 
let  alone,  and  when  we  know  that  when  we  did  go  to  war,  we 
only  went  to  repel  a  ruthless  invasion  of  our  homes  and  firesides, 
our  case  could  not  be  made  stronger.  And  we  have  the  right, 
therefore,  to  insist  that  our  children  shall  be  told  the  truth  about  it, 
and  we  should  be  content  with  nothing  less. 

Dr.  Jones,  in  his  history,  says: 

"The  seceding  States  not  only  had  a  perfect  right  to 
withdraw  from  the  Union,  but  they  had  amply  sufficient 


29 

cause  for  doing  so,  and  that  the  war  made  upon  them 
by  the  North  was  utterly  unjustifiable,  oppressive  and 
cruel,  and  that  the  South  could  honorably  have  pur- 
sued no  other  course,  than  to  resist  force  with  force, 
and  make  her  great  struggle  for  constitutional  freedom." 

Is  there  any  doubt  in  the  mind  of  any  Southerner  that  this 
is  the  truth?  If  not,  then  let  it  be  so  told  to  our  children.  We 
suffered  and  did  and  dared  enough  to  entitle  us  to  have  this 
done,  and  that  we  were  unsuccessful  makes  it  the  more  import- 
ant that  it  should  be  done.  A  successful  cause  will  take  care  of 
itself;  an  unsuccessful  one  must  rest  only  on  its  inherent  merits, 
and  if  it  can't  do  this,  then  those  who  supported  it  were  rebels 
and  traitors.  We  feel  then  that  we  can't  do  better  than  to  repeat 
here  what  we  said  in  our  report  of  1900,  on  the  importance  of 
the  trust  committed  to  our  hands.     We  then  said: 

"Appomattox  was  not  a  judicial  forum:  it  was  only 
a  battlefield,  a  test  of  physical  force,  where  the  starv- 
ing remnant  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia, 
"wearied  with  victory,"  surrendered  to  "overwhelm- 
ing numbers  and  resources."  We  make  no  appeal  from 
that  judgment,  on  the  issue  of  force.  But  when  we 
see  the  victors  in  that  contest,  meeting  year  by  year, 
and  using  the  superior  means  at  their  command,  to  pub- 
lish to  the  world  that  they  were  right  and  that  we  were 
ivrong  in  that  contest,  saying  that  we  were  "rebels" 
and  "traitors,"  in  defeuding  our  homes  and  firesides 
against  their  cruel  invasion,  that  we  had  no  legal  right 
to  withdraw  from  the  Union,  when  we  only  asked  to  be 
let  alone,  and  that  we  brought  on  that  war:  we  say, 
when  these,  and  other  wicked  and  false  charges  are 
brought  against  us  from  year  to  year,  and  the  attempt 
is  systematically  made  to  teach  our  children  that  these 
things  are  true,  and  therefore,  that  we  do  not  deserve 
their  sympathy  and  respect  because  of  our  alleged 
wicked  and  unjustifiable  course  in  that  war  and  in 
bringing  it  on — then  it  becomes  our  duty,  not  only  to 
ourselves  and  our  children,  but  to  the  thousands  of 
brave  men  and  women  who  gave  their  lives  a  "free-will 
offering,"  in  defence  of  the  principles  for  which  we 
fought,  to  vindicate  the  justice  of  our  cause,  and  to  do 
this  we  have  to  appeal  only  to  the  bar  of  truth  and  of 
justice." 

Bespectfully  submitted, 

Geo.  L.  Christian,  Chairman, 


Photomount 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

PAT.  JAN  21,  1908 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032721797 


FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


